Every time I open an old project I have to hunt down the old plugin installers that were used on the project at the time and it always causes a headache and time suck. Are there any solutions or advice on how to archive old projects with the vst’s it uses or something along those lines? Thank you for any help!
I think best practice in terms of project management (for archival) is to save MIDI and all other control data and then render all processing to audio files. Having audio files is really the only ‘fool proof’ way to do it, and have events run beginning to end for all tracks. In reality we may make some reasonable compromises on what to keep and render.
For installation of plugins I’m not sure if there’s an easier way around it than to just keep old installers around and install when needed. I know that I read somewhere about a way to basically run a Windows install within a Windows install. Basically it would be a sort of OS image that could be run inside your existing OS as an emulation, and if you had saved a version for a set of projects you would be able to open them that way without a reinstall (because installed software would be included). I’m not sure how efficient something like that would run or if it’s feasible. But at least that’s an option… iirc…
Many moons ago i used to add all the Vst installers including Vst third party fx to the project folder with the licencing keys and make global notes in the project inspector with the presets , but now most things are on line activation, as Mattias says rendering to audio is really the only safe way
See, I would have started something like that and forgot about it and then it’d have been a mess… 'cause I don’t brain good.
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I learnt the hard way on never backing up , having 3500 projects in one folder named 'Shite 1 ’ and wondered why things wouldn’t open so for about 8 years i suppose ,i religiously went down this route , believe me i started out a mess , back in the days of pints of Guinness ending up in my A H console , learning the hard way sort of teaches the dum and dummer 
“Fortunately” I’m in post-production so technically the burden for saving stuff is on my clients (TV networks and production companies). So I just make sure I can open things going back about a couple of years and beyond that it’s not really my problem.
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Ahhhhh , you have the easy life ahhhh
It’s truly remarkable how far back you can actually go , i can open all Sx3 projects with Jbridge and the installers if need be . Some folders were albums so only noting the presets per song were needed and the installers in the album folders BUT please don’t ask about the Atari folders Im still sieving through the mess today
I have the same problem with every old project.
sometimes i have a handfull different version of a vst, and everytime i need to try out which version i used in the old project and reinstall it…
is there a way to display which version was used in an old project?
Global notes or add a Note pad in the project folder